What do you do when you can’t find anything you want to read? You write it yourself. After plumbing the depths of Amazon for erotic romance featuring queer POC and coming up empty, Katrina Jackson took matters into her own hands and started writing her own. More than seventeen books later, we chatted with her about why word-of-mouth is still the best marketing tool—even for self-published authors!—why publishing her work on platforms besides Amazon allows her to reach a much wider international market, and why cats (!) have been crucial to her books. We also discuss the revelation that Amazon may not be the actual devil, inasmuch as it allows work by historically overlooked and marginalized groups to find an audience, something that traditional publishing has emphatically not been able to do, and the importance of self-reflection when it comes to building your personal library.

Katrina wants to remind you to check your voter registration and vote!

https://www.usa.gov/voter-registration

Donate to a bail fund (we pick PDX for obvious reasons):

https://www.gofundme.com/f/pdx-protest-bail-fund

And support the USPS (um, you can buy a mail carrier costume for your dog for Halloween??)

https://store.usps.com/store/results/gifts/_/N-nnxamr

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And especially for black indies who are writing

things, many of them self published because they cannot,

or they do not perceive traditional, traditional

publishing to be welcoming to that work you're then, you know,

sort of penalizing them for making a decision based on their

own desires and needs, but also based on a publishing atmosphere

that refuses to create space for them.

And

foreign Welcome to the hybrid pub Scout podcast with me, Emily

Einolander and me. Corinne kalasky, hello. We're mapping

the frontier between traditional and indie publishing, and

today's guest is Katrina Jackson. Katrina is a college

professor by day who writes romances. By weekend, when her

cats allow she writes high heat, diverse and mostly queer, erotic

romances and erotica. She also likes sleep, salt and pepper,

beards and sunshine. Welcome Katrina. Thanks for having me

absolutely All right. Well, I will start with the first

question. Since it's about cats, everybody's quite literally, I

think this is we asked the same question of every guest we've

ever had, because all our guests have cats, which is wonderful.

So tell us about your cat.

I have two boys.

One is about 12 or 13, I'm not entirely sure. And he's a black

cat, and he is lovely and an old man, and when I got him, he was

a kitten. Oh, wow, so very attached to me.

And the other is four and a half who he's a gender. I

specifically wanted a gender, because at the time, I had two

black cats, and I would joke with my mother that I wanted to,

on Halloween, recreate a Halloween Oreo. So two black

hats and an Oreo cat. I see a kitty cat. Oh, yeah, that's

Manny. He's the Black Cat. Who's the old one. He likes to follow

me around the house. Oh, that's right. And the other one is

stacks, but I named him after an Indras Elba character Stacker,

Pentecost from Pacific Rim, so we call him stacks, and he's

terrible, and I love him. I've also had him since he was a

kid. So what inspired you to start writing romance in

addition to your academic career? And could you tell us a

little bit about what kind of romance you'd like to write and

why?

Um, so I started writing romance when I was in graduate school,

and most of what inspired me was exhaustion.

There is something about, well, there's a lot about graduate

school that I found really stressful, obviously, but also,

really, I'm originally from California. I went to graduate

school in the Midwest,

so I was away from all of my family and most of my friends.

And it's a different thing to make friends, you know, after

college, right? So in an even more, an even more different

thing to make friends after you leave school for good, right? So

I was lonely and not a lot, which is why I got cats

eventually. And so I started reading fan fiction, and then I

stumbled on

a whole bunch of

black women writing fan fiction, who, sir,

who were a lot like me, and that they had professional lives, or

they were getting advanced degrees, and they were writing

fan fiction mostly as release, and I started reading it as

release, and then I just followed them into writing it,

and just wrote my first romance on a whim when I was supposed to

be finishing my master's degree, writing my thesis, because I

just there's that moment where you're looking at a piece of

academic writing that you've read 50 times and your advisor

has torn apart 49 times, that it stops making sense. Whatever

point you're making is gone. And so I would stop reading. They

always tell you stop reading, give yourself a break. But what

are you are you supposed to do? So?

So I started reading fan fiction and romance, and then I started

writing it for those moments when I needed to take a break.

That's great and and what is it 17 books later, or I'm not sure.

And, yeah, can you go a little into, like, the subject matter

that you write about, the types of romance where we're used to

talking to romance authors who are very like, market focused,

and do it for the money, and so kind of like, Chase what the

trends are. I.

Um, so is that kind of how you approach it, or is it more the

fun stuff?

Um, I'm not. First of all, I I need doing more research. Um,

outside of my job where I'm a historian, so all of my work is

research. Sounds nuts. I don't want to do that. Um, and also, I

always say, and I know lots of authors say this, but I

literally write for myself. So if I have an idea that makes me

giggle or makes me excited, I'll write that. And sometimes I

release those. Sometimes it's just for me, sometimes I go

nowhere. So I literally just write for myself.

So I write primarily erotic romance, although I have some

things that kind of straddle more less erotic romance, um, a

little bit of romantic suspense. I've moved into in the past year

or so,

a lot of erotica dealing with like polyamory and a lot of

bisexual black women in particular.

Yeah, I have a small town series that is, I don't know that's the

one I read.

I was wondering if random, and I like it. I was wondering if you

had a cat named Kathleen Cleaver, but no, but I did model

that cat. So when I got my ginger cat, I had another black

cat, a girl, and her name was Katrina, which is where I got my

pen name, and my friend in graduate school named her after

her name, Katrina. I'm not entirely sure I'll be back there

as a thing, but we did get there as a thing. But anyway, so I

modeled cat named cleaver after Katrina.

Oh, that's and then she died, like two years later. So,

no, no, that's not true. She died when I published my first

story, and then she

or she got sick when I published my first story, sorry, and then

she died right after I published from scratch. So well, she's

immortalized, yeah, immortalized her, yeah.

So where, where do you find your audience for I've seen you do a

lot. You're very like, good about posting on Instagram. And

I mean, I think in your stories, and your stories at least.

But do you, do you go after your audience when you're marketing

books, or is it just sort of like do what you can when you

can? Um, I think both of those are too gracious for me.

Personally, I'm, I'm a pretty passive person in the marketing

part. I don't do that well, and my friends like make fun of me

for that,

but it's not thing I love. It's not the thing that I got into

this for. So I'm definitely the kind of person who's like, I

want to make one tweet that I can retweet for all

or some variation on that.

And so I find most of my readers on Twitter, although I have

recently moved into Instagram on the encouragement of a friend,

which I like more, because it's visual, and I'm kind of visual,

so that part of it is nice. I'm also

I don't read any captions. And I assume a lot of people don't

either, so it's just nice to see the visual, as opposed to

Twitter, but mostly Twitter and then word of mouth. Like, I

think romance is the kind of genre that works really well

with word of mouth, and I've been really lucky to have that

happen.

Yeah, I was lucky enough to find a couple of your interviews on I

think shelf love was the podcast, and I found one with

you and Karelia Stutz waters and Katie Robert. And I think it was

talking about angst. And it was weird, because the press that I

had

worked for in graduate school, actually did a YA book by

Corellia, and then Katie Roberts was, like, the first romance

book I ever read. And so, like, I found a panel with the three

of you, and was like,

All right, I'll give it a shot. And then at one point, at one

point, Corellia was like, my because you were talking about

bully romance. And Corellia was like, my childhood bully died

young, and I'm still not sad about it.

The whole party was like,

Okay, well, I read her YA book, and she talked about what the

bully did to her. And I was like, I get it.

Okay, I think your next. Oh, yeah, I am all right. So as an

indie romance author, particularly one who often

writes about LGBTQ plus characters and poly

relationships, what has been.

Experience of getting romance books into brick and mortar

bookstores.

I won't lie, that's not our priority for me, and hasn't

been. So I'm I don't know that I'm the right person to ask

about that in particular, certainly, the first bookstore

to carry my books was the robotics, and that was because I

released a book. They told me that they thought it would sell

well, and so in paperback. And at that point, none of my books

were in paperback. And so then I spent, I think it was, four or

five months figuring out how to put a book in paperback

and how to format it. And then in that book was pink slip, and

they have, I think, consistently had a few copies in store, and

then, you know, after that, other small indie, indie

bookstores have covered or have

carried some of my books,

although I'm now rethinking how I put books in paperback so that

they are more accessible to indie bookstores, because I know

that they're not. I mean, there are lots of like behind the

scenes, things about that, like, how bookstores get, you know,

books and all paperbacks and all that.

But certainly that started with the RIP bodice, even just sort

of mentioning that they thought it would sell.

We should talk to them at some point. I just hear so many

stories, even about, like, I know that Lori is listening to

this, but Lori, our local paperback person, is a very,

very romance centric person. But even, like, you know, reverse

harem, the trend from like, a year ago, I think it's still

pretty popular. But even that needs to be put, like, in a

special part of the romance bookstore, because it's a little

too risque for some people.

So, like, it seems that there's still some friction there,

especially, like, if it's not that kind of like straight

romance, sort of margin there, yeah. I mean, I think that so, I

mean, because I remember your part of your question was about

like the fact that I write LGBT and polyamorous romance,

I think that there are lots of things that make me wonder about

whether or not so if the robot has had me contact me, I

probably wouldn't have put my books in paperback for

ever, maybe longer. I'm not entirely sure I don't have a

plan. I have friends who are indies who plan, and I'm like,

Well, you know, this seems good today,

but I definitely did imagine that none of those books would

sell. And then a year on, I sort of I have spent time thinking

about, like, what books

are that are popular for, you know, my readers and for new

readers, and what you know, covers look like. And I think

the really interesting thing about pretty much all of my

books is none of them present as particularly risque, even though

they are incredibly erotic. And part of that is because I can

only get so much stock and the things that I stock photos, so

the things that I prioritize are black women. So those usually

are single photos, right? So, or photos of a single person, which

means that like, you're not going to get like, a sort of

shirtless like person, or like, if I write a triad, you're not,

I'm not going to find a stock photo with like something

representative. So instead, you get what I hope is a beautiful

black woman on the cover that doesn't present particularly

risque and the book doesn't present particularly erotic. So

in that case, it might seem a little easier to carry that in

bookstores, and then you open it

different story, but they have to pick it up first, right? They

have to pick it up first, right. So maybe at that point, so that

part of it is also sort of happening. And then the other

thing is, I, even though my books are very often queer, I

don't tend to market them in sort of queer romance for very

specific reasons, mostly because, again, what I'm

prioritizing are people of color on the covers, on the pages. And

if you're looking at a lot of queer romance that is not

particularly especially women, queer women, that is not have

been the thrust for a while,

the thrust,

it's okay. I was interviewing someone, and I was like, Is

there anything you'd like to plug? And they're like, can you

ask that again and not say plug? I

Oh,

I wouldn't have thought of that.

I'm bad at like sexual innuendo, to be honest,

like you could have fooled me.

All right.

Okay, moving on. I.

Welcome to Twitter and a hashtag that came out in June called

blackout the best seller list. So I actually taught. We talked

to the person who's in charge of publishing at Kickstarter,

because they offer kind of like a method of self publishing, but

we're talking about, like the ability for people to pay for

their lives

by selling books. And so you tweeted, well, okay, so first

someone said, don't buy blackout, the best seller list

books from Amazon. And then you said, someone said not to buy

books for hashtag black publishing power and hashtag

blackout bestseller list from Amazon. Let's remember that many

black authors, self pub exclusive to Amazon for many

reasons, one of which is that publishing is racist. That's the

point, right? And I think a lot of traditional publishing know

that it I'm sorry

I said I was mad that day. I think, yeah, no, that's good. It

makes sense, like, I think that they, you know, that whole thing

generated from people going, Yes, publishing is racist, but

it is this one narrow thing that I think it is, and hadn't made

the connection to self publishing, or self publishing

on Amazon at all. So can you talk a little bit about what

Amazon offers black authors, especially the Indies, who, who

you know, who are, that's their main focus, and especially

romance authors that traditional publishing hasn't.

So I think even though I don't write exclusively black romance

mean meaning that everyone involved in their relationship

is black. A lot of the people that I look to when I started

self publishing were black romance authors, and they were

writing

mostly contemporary black romance

that featured a lot of African American Vernacular English, a

lot of sort of straddling, some of them straddling that romance

urban divide, which some people are uncomfortable with, and

writing a lot of erotica, as well as other things like, there

are a lot of there's a lot of variation in that. So there are

people who write less erotic, there are people who write some

version of essentially a black category romance. But all of

them, for the most part, were publishing in KU which meant

they were exclusive to Amazon and,

you know, in my conversations with them behind the scenes, but

also sort of watching the way that they talked about their

publishing. Essentially, what they said was, this allows me to

fund my next book, right? This allows me to buy the software

that I need. This allows me to go out and meet my readers. If

they had book events, like for some of them, it was a little

bit of money to sort of get bare bones, which is certainly what

it was for me when I started for some of them, they are doing

very well. Like I cannot even fathom some of the like page

reads, they're pulling in.

And

so when I was taking my cues from them, they were all very

staunchly indie, and that they had no desire to go to

traditional publishing, partially because, one, they

didn't think that they could write only black romance, right?

I mean, there is, there are spaces for black romance,

certainly. But if we're kind of being attentive to the ways in

which the larger romance publishers, the books that

they're acquiring, they do not tend to be black romance, right?

And so they were sort of saying, I want to write this, you know,

I want to write black romance, whatever that looks like,

whether it's contemporary or historical, whatever, but I'm

not going to query for three years for every large public,

for every large press, to say, No, I'm not interested. Right

when I can write this book and or that I don't have the talent,

which is, you know how it sometimes gets it gets framed,

right when I can write this book, publish it to Amazon,

exclusive or not, and it'll be a number one bestseller, right? A

number one new release. And many of them, I mean, they're worse

than me. They have no marketing. They're like I dropped a book.

Here's a link an hour and a half later, it's a number one best

seller on Amazon. And so I was sort of taking my model, not

necessarily on sort of their lack of marketing

or even less than me, but in the freedom to be able to write the

things that I want to write, like a lot of my books are

polyamorous,

and there are not a lot of traditional publishers

publishing polyamorous romance right now, especially because

we've lost a lot of the publishers who publish Our more

erotic content, right?

And I wrote pink slip, which is one of my more popular titles,

primarily because in looking, you know, after a year of sort

of listening to the romancelandia conversation on

Twitter, I put everything they said would not be popular in a

romance. They said no one cares about queer, black women. No one

cares.

Is about queer women, period. No one wants to read bi women,

right? Because they only want mmf, not FFM. And if it's going

to be romantic suspense, it has to be dark. And you know, all of

these, and these were just narratives that I had picked up.

And I was like, well, I'll just write all the things, because

all the stuff they said wouldn't sell. I was like, that sounds

great. I want to write that. And I wrote that, and it has been

since my consistent, you know, bestseller, mostly month to

month. And so what it taught me was that chat wasn't

particularly useful, right? It could tell me a piece of the

market, which those might not be my readers anyway, right? But it

couldn't necessarily tell me

that something may or may not be successful, which meant that I

had to rethink how I was approaching even selling my

books, which I did do after that I

want to read pink slip now.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

Yeah, and I think so. So it almost sounds like,

you know, you can monitor the conversation enough you've seen

all of the horror stories you've heard, like the way that

acquisitions editors behave now seems pretty notorious, and it's

sort of like, you know, I don't tell me what I already know. If

I can sell this thing and you can't, then that's your problem.

Yeah,

yeah. I mean, I relate to that certainly with some of the

acquisitions assistance I've done. But

so do you have thoughts for people who do like as we know,

Amazon isn't like the best company in the world.

But do you have thoughts on how people can stay not not support

Amazon, but also support black authors who maybe only,

what's that dialectical medium there?

I mean, I think that so I will say that I moved some of my

books. Why? So that they are available for readers who don't

want to give Amazon money, but I think at one point, I'm not sure

when, in the last 300 years of this month, or 300 years of this

year, but I was very explicit that some of my books were built

to live on. KU, right. So the Welcome to seaport series is a

series of novellas. They are 99 cents.

They were meant they were built to live on KU I didn't

understand that. That's what I was doing at the time, but now I

know so they are unlikely to leave that medium unless, like

Amazon falls, which you know, maybe will

love, an empire falling, no problems.

But so they're built to live on that medium. And I try and be

really specific about when I take things wide, because I do

some months make more money. Who can you pay me than I do from

straight sales, right? And I make more money on Amazon than I

do on every other platform, with the exception of, like,

overdrive and for one month, right?

So I can't say, No, I'm not going to sell on Amazon, just so

that you all can maybe find this on

that's not realistic, right?

But either.

But part of the reason I went wide was mostly about

international readers. So this also, I would say, the two years

before I went wide was me sort of understanding who and where

my readers were. A lot of my readers were, or

I have a contingent of readers who are international. And every

now and then Amazon in their countries will hide my books

because of the erotic content, and in those cases, I sort of

take stock of that. And a couple of those books were the books

that I made wide when they were available so that they could buy

them from other sites.

And then the other reason I went wide was so that if they

couldn't buy the books, they could request them on overdrive

at their libraries, which is perfectly fine for me and again,

and I don't mark my books up in the way that I know traditional

publishers do to sell them. Indians are unlikely to do that

because it's insane. Everything I've heard about the way

traditional publishers sell their whatever, but,

well, but um, and that's a sale for me. I don't care, right? I

don't care if my readers, but if their library will buy the ebook

and they will check it out for the library, amazing, like I

don't I do.

Think about affordability for the reader. And sometimes, you

know, I'll do I'll try things out and sort of, you know, kind

of figure out what's the best way for them to read it. But

some stuff is meant to be on Amazon, and it won't leave for

the exact same reason as some stuff is is wider.

So you can think outside of the box a little bit as a reader, to

find where you lend your support to authors, yeah, and right? And

the other thing people can do,

which, again, was good for me, is, if you don't want to buy the

paperback from Amazon.

You can encourage that your if the author has a paperback

available,

you can consider where that paperback is. So my paperbacks

are through Amazon. That's not the way to go, if that's what

you're trying to avoid, but I am moving them so that libraries

and bookstores can get them so they won't be through Amazon. So

asking the indie author you're interested in, hey, how do you

distribute your paperbacks? Is, I think, a perfectly fine

question to ask. You can also,

I think signal boosting is really great, which I think some

people, times people think that that's just kind of minor. But I

have been surprised at how often some of my books have sold

really well, simply because someone was like, this seems

nuts with me.

Maybe not nuts. But like, yeah. Like there that again. Word of

mouth is also sort of really significant. Let's see. So what

did you go through to get your books onto bookshop.org? As an

independent author,

it's on bookshop.org

Yeah, oh, didn't know this.

Don't have any idea. I gosh,

okay, next question, yeah,

this is the thing I'm trying to figure out about distribution. I

there's so much so as much as Amazon does allow for the

possibility of affordably making books available

for like, for you to make books available. So if you, if you

want to, as an indie release your paperbacks, you have to go

through Ingram Spark, right? That's an expensive process at

some level, right? Whether it's the setup fee or buying your own

ISBN, like, at some point you are shelling out a bunch of

money. And considering how many books I have, that's an

expensive process to move them over, so that's going to take

time. But then the only reason I'm willing to do that is

because I had any booksellers say, Hey, I can't get all your

books. And so for what, even though, and I'll go back to

Amazon and I'll look at, you know, I clicked expanded

distribution, and allegedly, these books are available, but

they're not available available, right? So there is a

mystification of some information about where my books

are that is really frustrating. So you have, you have done

Ingram Spark for a couple No, I have, I literally just decided

to do that. Oh, my God, pressuring me, because pink slip

is on there, and then two other ones. So I was like, Oh, well,

she did it through Ingram Spark. Maybe that's why, because

bookshop.org, everyone is owned by Ingram, which is also a large

company

and a monopoly. Yes, they have now that Baker and Taylor's

gone, Ingram's pretty much monopolized the book

distribution like that link in the chain. They're the Amazon of

book distributors. Now they're the book they're the Amazon

bookstores. Yeah, well, but isn't that the really

fascinating part? So when I have questions, I usually go to Zoe

York, because I think she understands. I don't know if

you've talked to her, she's ridiculously knowledgeable about

indie publishing. And I literally went to her, this is

super recent, like three weeks ago, because a book bookseller

had told me they couldn't get all of my books, even though

they're more more available. And I said, do you understand why?

And she very kindly and completely without asking for

anything in return. Zoe York walked me through all of the

ways that books that were distributed through Amazon could

be available in spaces that were allegedly ingramspark only. And

essentially where we ended up with is, if people want to

acquire books, they can, right. If they want to get the

information for books, they can. And so every time you're like,

Well, I can I get this thing or whatever, it's really just

because no one wants to, which is absolutely insane for the

author, right? And for the for the reader, it's like, this

should be available. I have no idea why, and I also don't know

why this other one is available. I actually don't get to make

that decision.

That's what I've seen, like we've talked to.

To Joe bill at microcosm, who had a big like article in

Publishers Weekly a couple years ago, because he was the first

one to be like, just not going to sell my books on Amazon

anymore. And he's in such a well. And I think this speaks a

little to what you've been talking about with the type of

romance that you write. He's in such a niche that his audience

will find him no matter what, because they want what he has.

But he said that within a couple of weeks, he was seeing their

books still up on Amazon, like, from different sources, there's

people who just, like, buy them up and sell them themselves,

right? Yeah. And I think, I think by people were their

companies, and some of them are affiliated with Amazon, and give

them the money as well. So

it's maddening. It's madness.

So you write for radish too. I do that wasn't that was a

another New Order development. I had friends who wrote for them,

and thought that I would like it, and thought that my books

would do well there, which the second part of that has not been

proven particularly true, which is interesting and good market

research. I you know, I'll take it, but I did like the

serialized aspects of it. So I'm also rethinking how I use radish

right now,

but that was also part of me making books wide, is that as

long as they're on KU, you can distribute them any way you

want. So my books are available through Barnes and Noble and,

you know, script and all of that stuff, and they're on radish. So

wherever you are comfortable spending your money, they are

there, and for whatever budget you're comfortable as well too.

Radish is expensive, but some people like reading in that way,

so the trade off for them is worth it. So the books that you

write can be sold other places than radish that you don't just

like, have certain things that you only do on there. I know,

I know some people do. They have written stories specifically for

radish that are not available anywhere else. I gotta be honest

with you, I only have so much brain power. I have a job that

is driving me a little bit more insane every day. So I only

write so many stories, and I try and make those as widely

available as possible. But I am, although I've fallen off, I am

writing a story on radish first to be released wide, and I did

that with another story before, so office hours, I wrote on

radish, and then when it was finished on radish, I released

it wide, and that's probably what I'll do in the future.

Okay, I had it in my head. I just talked to a sci fi author a

couple of episodes ago, and he did a series for cereal box,

which apparently they do it like a TV writer room, almost, where

they, like, kind of hire people on to write a serial together.

So I wasn't sure if, like, radish was the romance version

of that. But it sounds like no they do actually have that. I

think Tamara lush has done that with them, like they brought in

a whole bunch of popular authors on radish, and sort of, I don't

know if they had them write something together, or they

prepared them for writing things specifically targeted to radish,

but she actually gave an interview with Shell glove so,

and she talked specifically about this and that process. So

I think it kind of is, but that's, that's rarefied air that

is not, that is not where I'm living on.

Okay, so there's been some I also discovered this in my

research of the podcast that you've been on, I found a

podcast called Three Black Chicks. I don't think you were

were you on it, though, or did they just talk about you? Okay,

well, they're your fans.

They had your name and something. They mentioned that

some of their favorite black authors had been getting ever

since June, and people, you know, black out the best seller

list, etc. More white people have been buying black books to

read. But the people on this podcast mentioned that their

favorite authors were starting to get bad reviews from people

who would leave a review like, I can't relate to this. I don't

understand it. One star. Yeah. So is there? Do you have

recommendations or requests for white people who go out to and

want to read more black authors and books about black people

without causing that sort of collateral damage or direct

damage? I guess

that's a great question.

So I have a white reader in mind who's read everything or written

thus far, and she is

a really wonderful reader, and then also online friend for lots

of reasons, and part of what she and I talked about.

So I want to say, like a year ago, is that, and maybe even

more recently, is that we both were the kind of readers who are

self reflective about what we read. And so she specifically,

before, I think she found my books, had decided she wanted to

read more indie authors and more authors of color. And so she

started tracking that reading, and part of what that told her

is, was she reading a particular kind of book? Should she

diversify those selections? Did she have tropes that she liked

that sort of worked for her regardless and she and there are

other things, but part of what I loved, because that's how my

brain works as well, is that thinking about what I'm like,

actually imbibing actually helps me figure out what I want going

forward. And I think it is really irresponsible to go into

reading books by authors of color, in particular black

authors, if you never have before, expecting that they have

to look like everything you've read before, and especially for

black indies who are writing things, many of them self

published because they cannot, or they do not perceive

traditional, traditional publishing to be welcoming to

that work you're then, you know, sort of penalizing them for

making a decision based on their own desires and needs, but also

based on a publishing atmosphere that refuses to create space for

them, right?

So I think you know being sort of conscientious about why

you're reading, right? If you're reading just to find the same

kinds of books that you can find traditional publishing. There

are black authors who are traditionally published, read

them, right? Like there is a chance that that might be sort

of similar if you're reading, you know, black Indies.

Consider, well, consider why you want to read Black Indies. In

particular, I think if you want to read Black indies, thinking

it's like traditionally published, but like a faster

turnaround, that's not true, right? If you want to read Black

indies because you want to support, you know, independent

authors, that's a step, but it also isn't sort of the end. So I

think you should ask yourself some questions before you just

go into

reading black indies, or really, any indie authors, because the

atmosphere in indie publishing is so different and, and even

indies versus self published, right? That is such a building

different atmospheres. And so thinking about what you're

looking for can help you, I think, be a better reader and

kind of seeing something in its own context, and, and, yeah, not

making it about what you already like and holding it to that

standard is kind of what you're saying. Of what you're saying.

Yeah. Um, I don't want to say not holding it to that standard,

but it's the looking at it in its own context, right, right?

Um, so if you look at the sort of landscape of polyamorous

romance, um, and there's, I'm

going to say not enough, because I think there should be just

more.

They're very little of it features black characters,

right? So if someone's coming to my polyamorous romance and like,

you know, pink slip starts with like this, like young 20

something black woman like talking about edging herself for

her bosses, whatever, like that is a different, potentially a

different story that you were going to get in that book,

because there was no one, no editor, who said, I don't know

people are gonna like this in the Midwest, because, you know,

here I am in the Midwest, and I like it, so it's fine, right? So

I had no one sort of second guessing whether or not this was

marketable, because I don't second guess if a thing is

marketable. If it's not for you, I think it's totally fine to say

that this book is not for me, right? But if it's not for you

because it's indie published, that's a different sort of

statement, in my opinion.

If that makes sense, more categorical and more like taste

based. Yeah, lots of people hate my books respected.

But, you know, they usually hate it not because, well, I don't

know. I would like to think they hate it, not because I'm a black

woman or a black author, but because they just hate the way

that I write, which I think is also fair.

Yeah,

think that's the, I think that's the fairest judgment.

Or, you know, the author is a terrible person, yes,

yeah. And I'm sure there are people who hate me.

That's, that's, it's not that kind of podcast.

Yeah, so, okay, so what are you reading, watching and or

listening to right now? I.

Yeah, oh, yikes.

I wanted to keep it wide, just in case you weren't reading

anything right now. Like, I'm barely, like, your books, your

three seaport books that I have finished are the only things

I've been able to finish in like two months, because they're

like, you know, short and fluffy and nice, and that's all I can

handle right now. Yeah, I feel the same. Everything is hard,

that's sort of rough. I am absolutely not reading anything

right now. Well, that's not true. I'm rereading Beverly

Jenkins forbidden, but that's for academic work,

and

I'm

I'm rewatched. Oh, I'm not reading. I'm doing anything new.

I'm re watching Mayans MC on Hulu, which is Kurt Sutter's

Sons of Anarchy spinoff. I adore that show. It's so much better

than the original.

Noted,

what about you? Corinne, oh, let's see, I just started

reading a Murakami book, actually. So, yeah, it's like an

old one after dark. Have you read that? No, I don't know,

right? A lot of Yeah, I know, I know. So I started reading that,

and then I've been watching that taste the nation show on Hulu

that Kimberly recommended to us. Oh, yeah, which is really good,

so, but yeah. I mean, I also have it. I mean, I guess

Murakami is whatever kind of the heavy, but not really. You know

what? I mean? Like, I don't know, it doesn't feel super

heavy to me. So I don't feel like I'm doing anything that's,

yeah, like, really serious right now, because I can't like

everybody else.

Yeah. What about you? Emily, I already said I could only read.

Oh, you're only reading three of her fluffy books. What are you

watching, though? What I've been watching Great British Bake Off.

And I finished. I finished watching DS nine last weekend.

Most terrible, most terrible. Last episode other than Dexter,

but a great show.

Yeah, that's that's been pretty much it.

Oh yeah, there are also podcasts I've been listening. Yeah, good,

yeah,

yeah. Started getting into you wrong about which I really love

that isn't that great. So good, although I skipped their most

recent episode on Tuskegee syphilis experiment, that's just

really sad. I just couldn't, I couldn't do that, but otherwise

I love that. Yeah, don't do that to yourself

in your life right now.

Anyway,

where can people find you and what would you like to promote

right now? Katrina, oh, man,

wow, that's a rough

one. You can always find me unfortunately on Twitter at

Katrina jacks, k, T, R, I n, a, j, A, X, and I say unfortunately

because I tweet a lot, and I wish I tweeted less.

I'm sorry, but I'm also not. Don't apologize.

That's it.

That's that's a that's a specific kind of piece of me

that I it's not for everyone, which is why I'm also on

Instagram at cat Jackson books, where I almost never post,

like, on my actual feed, but I'm always in the stories with,

like, pretty pictures, because I love that. Um, what would I like

to promote right now? Um,

wow. Donate to a bail fund. Please register to vote, and if

you can, please apply to vote by mail. Buy some stamps. And

you know my books are available wherever.

Well, you can find us on Twitter, at hybrid pub scout on

Facebook, at hybrid pub scout on Instagram, at hybrid pub Scout

pod. Please go to hybridpubscout.com and click

join our troop, and you'll get our free, free guide to choosing

between self publishing and traditional publishing. What is

it? Oh, the hybrid pub Scout guide to picking your publishing

path is what it's called. I didn't even write that down.

Thank you so much, Katrina, thank you,

and thanks for giving a riff about books. You

you.